Software Lead Weekly
softwareleadweekly.com · Group blog · on HN since 2013
Software Lead Weekly is a weekly newsletter curating articles on leading and managing software teams, with an associated Slack group.
What HN saysCommenters repeatedly recommend it as a good, varied weekly roundup for engineering managers asking for resources.
18HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
1stories submitted
56story points
4 years agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage16 people · first shared 2014
- 2Applying Dan Ariely's TED talk to software development1 people · 56 points · first shared 2013 · 10 comments on HN
- 3Issues 5131 people · first shared 2022
What HN people wrote when they linked it
gadders · 2022-08-09
This is a pretty good weekly newsletter that collates some great articles on tech management: https://softwareleadweekly.com/
lonriesberg · 2019-12-06
Not a book but Software Lead Weekly is a great newsletter that curates content from around the web about leadership in tech: https://softwareleadweekly.com
andygrunwald · 2018-05-28
I am anegineering Manager myself and don’t follow specific blogs. I can recommend the weekly email from Software Lead: http://softwareleadweekly.com
This is a good mix of various articles from different authors every week.
elliottcarlson · 2018-01-15
http://softwareleadweekly.com/ - A weekly newsletter, as well as Slack group - great resource.
Books:
- Leaders Eat Last
- Managing Humans
- What Got You Here, Won't Get You There
- Radical Focus
- Leading Snowflakes: The Engineering Manager Handbook
- The Manager's Path
- The Coaching Habit
- Thanks for the Feedback
nkzednan · 2017-06-18
Check out Managing Humans by Michael Lopp. Or, as @jennyp mentioned, check out his blog - rands in repose. His book is basically a collection of blog posts.
Another book that was recommended for new managers is https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118911954/ -
Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others by Byham and Wellins
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
Not books, but other resources that might be useful:
https://www.tombartel.de/#blog
http://softwareleadweekly.com/ - also comes as a weekly email with links to different articles
https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass
ghuntley · 2016-09-29
Leadership and mentoring. When they can write great documentation (without prompting) and http://softwareleadweekly.com/ becomes their favourite weekly read. When they come to you with improvements outside of the technical domain on how to improve shop and even better when it's just a side chat about what they have already improved and what went well, what didn't and what they learned (self-awareness). When they stop treating promotions like mechanical checkboxes.
hkarthik · 2014-11-07
I would recommend Leading Snowflakes as a great read for first time engineering managers: http://leadingsnowflakes.com/
And subscribe to the author's weekly email list. Great set of reads and links here:
http://softwareleadweekly.com/
strife25 · 2022-02-28
Everyone recommends The Manager's Path, but I don't think it's a good book to explain HOW to become a manager. The book's goal is to explain the career path of a manager from tech lead to CTO.
My #1 recommendation these days is "Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager" by Jamies Stanier. This book explains how to approach the work a manager is involved in and what you can expect from the day to day. Planning, hard conversations, performance reviews etc.
Also, look for general management books. Leadership is something all humans do – software management is about managing creative people. Some other books I recommend are:
• Creativity, Inc by Ed Matmull
• Crucial Conversation
• Team of Teams
For email newsletters, I recommend Software Lead Weekly (https://softwareleadweekly.com/) and Better Allies (https://betterallies.com/more-content/).
Lastly, I also write a blog called Build the Stage (https://www.buildthestage.com) about managing SWEs. I've got posts about performance reviews, team meetings, how to give feedback, etc. It'll help you out.
zoenolan · 2020-07-07
Newsletters
http://levelup.thekua.com/
https://softwareleadweekly.com/
http://www.techmanagerweekly.com/
https://wherewithall.com/
Blogs
https://randsinrepose.com/
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/
https://www.askamanager.org/
https://increment.com/
https://devtomanager.com/
Conference
https://theleaddeveloper.com/
Other Resources
http://lenareinhard.com/engineering-management-reads/
https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing
Previously: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712194
tmoravec · 2020-02-09
I read Software Lead Weekly: https://softwareleadweekly.com/
It’s mostly about interesting links on management, company culture, or software development.
blowski · 2020-02-06
A few good resources for this. The different positions of "Technical Lead", "CTO", "Engineering Manager" all vary from company to company so I'm not sure what your new role will entail.
1. https://pragprog.com/book/jsengman/become-an-effective-software-engine… which had a good conversation here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129).
2. https://managinghumans.com/ by Michael Lopes
3. https://leadingsnowflakes.com/, which also has a good weekly newsletter - http://softwareleadweekly.com/.
4. https://www.udemy.com/course/practical-leadership/
5. https://tomdemarco.com/Books/deadline.html - quite old now, but it's still hugely insightful.
May I wish you the best of luck. It's an exciting and really difficult challenge, but can be hugely rewarding in the end.
ejpastorino · 2017-04-11
Software Lead Weekly is consistently full of useful and interesting articles: http://softwareleadweekly.com/
kiesel · 2016-02-07
I enjoy reading
* http://softwareleadweekly.com/ - about people, culture, leadership
* http://www.devopsweekly.com/ - DevOps, by Gareth Rushgrove
Just my pick. Indeed, I've found links there that haven't popped up anywhere else (HN, Twitter), so I second the original poster's opinion that mail newsletters are a good thing - wouldn't have thought that.
sanzen · 2017-04-21
Just the links from…
pointnova · 2017-04-11
I enjoy Software Lead Weekly: http://softwareleadweekly.com/
nexxer · 2017-08-03
After many years of RSS (Google Reader, then Feedly), I gave up on it due to sheer volume and now get my daily fix from curated email newsletters, a mix of news and tech-related ones. This post lead me to make an inventory of them:
http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/morning-briefing-europe
https://qz.com/
https://webopsweekly.com/
https://www.finimize.com/
http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/
https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-macro/
https://labnotes.org/
https://aeon.co/
http://softwareleadweekly.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/the-interpreter
http://www.phpweekly.com/
http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
http://www.electricdreaming.com/
https://www.dpreview.com/newsletter
And a few Greek ones, might as well add them:
https://insidestory.gr/
http://factnews.gr/
http://www.georgakopoulos.org/2014/05/newsletter/
cjcenizal · 2022-09-23
Hi, author here! I wish I had a solution to this problem! The idealistic side of me wants everyone to "think critically". Of course if all humans were critical about the decisions they made and their effects on the systems around them (organizations, society, environment), we probably wouldn't have wars and global warming.
So that won't scale beyond the individual, which might be acceptable from a Stoic perspective but I doubt that's the solution you're looking for.
Oren Ellenborgen shared my post in today's edition of Software Lead Weekly [1], and in his summary of the post he suggests using Key Failure Indicators (KFIs) to counterbalance Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). From what I understand, the idea is that you observe metrics of success but you also observe metrics of health, and take action if the former starts degrading the latter.
For example, if you want to deliver features more quickly, you might measure the time between a change is submitted for review and the time it's deployed. But if you're concerned that this could degrade quality, you could also measure the number of defects that are identified. If defects increase as delivery time decreases, this indicates the success metric is causing some undesirable behavior. Hope this helps.
[1] https://softwareleadweekly.com/issues/513